“Right again.”
Harr ran his fingers through his hair, laughing at how imaginative his brain was being at the moment.
“So why me?”
“Again, you were fun,” explained Vlak, “and you were dealt a cruddy hand.”
“Exactly, you’d been sentenced to execution for a military mistake. We couldn’t have that.” Grog shook his head and laughed. “Silly, when you think about it.” He cleared his throat.
“So same as Veli.”
“Veli was a good kid,” Vlak said seriously, “but he’d been pestered and tormented to the point where he’d turned to the not-so-light side of the—”
“And yet you let it go on?” Harr interrupted.
“Not our way to interfere,” Vlak replied.
“How is joining my ship’s crew not interfering, exactly?”
“Well, we didn’t interfere directly,” answered Grog. “We just jumped on to serve.”
“More like observe, eh Grog?”
“True. And you should know the castration thing with Veli actually does work. He’ll be a good boy from now on. It’s the way of things with dinosaurs.”
“But why?” said Harr.
“Testosterone, mostly, but it’s also due to the standard physical makeup of—”
“No, why did you do all of this?”
“We were impressed with how you got people to follow you, Captain Harr.”
“Vlak’s right,” said Grog. “And we thought maybe we could learn a thing or two, truth be told.”
“Wait, what?”
Vlak put up his hands. “It’s not easy being a creator, so we sometimes look to our creations for guidance.”
Harr’s brain was ready to cramp at this point, which likely meant he was in the final throes of life and the oxygen had almost fully dissipated, but this was not how he’d expected his final moments to be. Granted, he’d never given much thought to what he did expect, but it couldn’t be this!
“Hold on, hold on,” he said, waving his hands around. “You two honestly expect me to believe you’re gods, especially after you’ve just said you wanted to learn from me?”
“We prefer the term ‘creators.’”
“Yeah, we don’t need worshipers,” Vlak agreed. “Gods need that stuff.”
“We created the gods.”
“Oh, right,” said Harr. “That makes much more sense.”
“Well, technically we created the Fates,” said Vlak. “They went about creating gods.”
“Right.” Harr was nodding. “Fates.”
“I know this must be hard to believe, but it’s all true.”
Grog put a hand on Harr’s shoulder. “Every word.”
“Uh huh.”
Vlak stood up and put his hands on his hips. He gave Harr a serious look and then shook his head.
“Looks like we need to show him, Grog.”
“Looks like.”
§ § §
Grog grabbed one arm while Vlak grabbed the other. They started moving towards the ceiling at breakneck speed, blending through it as if it weren’t even there.
The vastness of space engulfed them as Harr’s eyes threatened to pop from his head.
He saw the Reluctant floating in front of the space sign the Overseer’s had set in place. He saw moons and stars and nebulas and galaxies. All things he’d seen many times, but now without the restraints of being trapped inside of a vessel.
They took him to Segnal and showed him the sped-up version of his life. Everything from his youth to his entry into the military; his planned execution; taking command of Platoon F; trying to avoid crashing into the Kortnor space station; combating the angry robots on Segnal Prime; working with the giants on Merrymoon; dealing with the inquisitor on Earth, among other members of their populace in different eras; fighting the androids of Segnal’s future; falling in love with Rella; solving the kidnap of Parfait on Fantasy Planet; fighting for his life during the crew’s previous mission; and so on. They didn’t miss a detail.
His life was flashing before his eyes.
Everything.
It was laid out in perfect unison, even the bit where he met Grog and Vlak on the planet of Mugoog.
But it paused there for a moment. Instead of just the standard details of the event, it showed things from Grog and Vlak’s perspective. It showed them floating outside of the Reluctant as Harr was grumbling about lost love inside the ship. It showed the two gods nodding at each other and then flashing down to the surface of the planet. And it showed the natives bowing down to them moments before the Reluctant broke through the atmosphere.
And then things went back to Harr’s perspective, following him through each major accomplishment as the captain of Platoon F until the moment those weapons were about to be fired at the command of Mistress Overseer Pillbox.
§ § §
They had returned to the room with the crew of Platoon F, all the soldiers, and the newly appointed Mistress Overseer Pillbox.
“Believe us now?” Grog asked as a thin glow encapsulated his person.
“Wow,” was all Harr could say in response.
“Thing is, you can’t tell anyone about this,” Vlak stated seriously.
“Wouldn’t believe me anyway,” Harr replied.
“True.” Grog glanced at Vlak, who shrugged in response. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but we did interfere once more.”
“How?”
“We felt bad for the dinosaurs on Earth.”
“Me too,” said Harr, still feeling shame over having to wipe them out.
“The good news is they’re all fine. We moved them to another planet far away from Earth and Segnal. They have technology now, including space flight, and they’re part of a growing community of peaceful worlds.” Grog lifted Harr’s chin up. “This is because of you and your crew, Captain. Young Veli did change due to what you’d all done. He helped the world grow in a positive direction. They thrived because of him.”
“Well, that’s good anyway.”
“Isn’t it?” Vlak said with a wide smile.
“But, wait,” said Harr as a thought hit him, “you two were using the Feeder like it was nobody’s business. How do you explain that?”
“Ah, yes,” answered Grog, “the Feeder. Interesting piece of technology, actually. At first we let ourselves delve into its teachings, mostly for a laugh, but it actually worked better than expected.”
“It did?”
“It did, Captain,” said Vlak. “You see, we already knew everything it was showing us, but the perspective was not anticipated. We’ve never seen the world from the standpoint of a robot before.”
“Exactly.”
“But even that didn’t hold our interest for very long, eh, Grog?”
“Nope. Eventually the thrill died out.”
“You two spent hours in there, though,” Harr pointed out.
“True. We found a section on video gaming.” Grog laughed. “I was kicking Vlak’s ass all over the place in the game with the snipers.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Vlak said. “Easy to do when you just hide behind trashcans and such.”
“It’s as solid a strategy as any.”
Harr had to admit it made sense for these two to spend countless hours playing video games. They acted like a couple of teenagers most of the time, after all. Hell, even Jezden seemed somewhat refined next to them. That was a sobering thought.
“So what are you going to do now?” Harr asked, interrupting the little debate that had popped up regarding practical video game strategies. “You can’t stay on my ship, obviously.”
“Actually, we can.”
“True, Vlak, but we’re not going to.” Grog sighed heavily. “Our wives have been nagging at us for millennia to take them on a decent vacation.”
“Wives?”
“So we’re going to ask you to drop us off at Mugoog, saying that we want to go back to a simpler life.”
“The crew will buy it,” said Vlak, “esp
ecially after all that just happened.”
“Wait a second,” said Harr, standing up. “The people on Mugoog… did they know who you really were?”
“Sure.”
Vlak laughed. “Why do you think their leader threw that spear at you that day when you stepped out of your ship? He didn’t want you harming his creator.”
“Cavemen are so cute at that stage of development,” Grog said with a smile.
“EEHs, remember?”
“Ah,” Grog said with a bow to Vlak, “correct.”
“This is baffling,” Harr said. He was dizzy and still not one hundred percent certain this wasn’t just his final hurrah.
“It’ll take some time for you to get your head around it, I’m sure.”
Grog slapped Harr on the shoulder. “In the meantime, we’re going to put in a few slight changes with the mindset of the Overseer populace.”
“Yeah, you’ll be on your way soon to new adventures.”
“But they’re going to kill us,” said Harr, pointing at the line of weapons before him.
Grog and Vlak moved Harr back into his position between Moon and Frexle.
“Let’s see, shall we?”
“Wait,” said Harr. “One more question: Are your names actually Grog and Vlak?”
“As far as you know.”
§ § §
“Fire!”
Fingers pulled at triggers.
The clack clack of hammers slammed against metal.
“Foomps” sounded from all the weapons as Harr scrunched his eyes closed, expecting the worst… as if what he’d seen already hadn’t been bad enough.
Nothing happened.
He opened an eye at the sound of Pillbox’s laughter.
Hanging from the barrels of each weapon was a small flag that said, “GREAT JOB!”
GOING HOME
Maybe he was dead and maybe he wasn’t. He honestly didn’t know, but seeing that he was back aboard the Reluctant, and noting that his crew was all intact, he guessed it didn’t really matter anyway. From his perspective, he was just as alive as ever.
Still, he wanted to be sure, seeing that it had taken forever to get to this point after catching Veli. But if Harr had learned anything over his tenure in Platoon F, mission wrap-ups tended to take a while. Kind of like that long fantasy book he read when he was in high school—the one about the little guy who had to carry a bracelet to the pit of Mudsore. Great book, but the ending just dragged on and on and on.
So, he pinched himself.
It hurt.
“It won’t be the same without you two at your stations,” Commander Sandoo said.
“You can say that again, dude,” laughed Grog.
“Exactly.”
“It’s a shame,” Sandoo added. “I thought you were making a turn for the military way of thinking.”
“Thanks, Commander, but it just ain’t who we are.”
“You may call me Sandoo,” the commander said. “Or Kip, if you’d prefer.”
Vlak’s eyebrows went up. “Yeah?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Kip.”
“Good man, Kip,” Grog said, shaking the android’s hand.
“You guys are making me sick,” Jezden said with a grunt.
The two EEHs, or gods, or creators, or whatever the hell they were, shook hands with everyone, gave Harr a wink, and then Geezer pressed the button to transport them back home.
“Well, Captain Harr,” Liverbing called from his position on the ramp of the Tiny Ship, “we’re going to be on our way, too.”
“What are your plans, Liverbing?”
“The same as they were the moment this ship landed on our doorstep: exploration.” He smiled, which was something he rarely did. “There is a vast canvas out there and we want to learn all we can. But don’t worry, we’ll always be around to help if you find yourselves in a bind.”
“You can count on our support, too,” Harr replied, “should you ever need it.”
Liverbing bowed and waved at the rest of the crew before heading up the ramp.
“All right, Goozer,” Geezer was saying to his little replica, “you be sure to keep in touch, yeah?”
“I will. Got a number of pieces of tech I’m working on.”
“Same here,” Geezer replied. “Frex and I are hoping to have a Ribinsaw Koostakleeker working by the end of the cycle.”
“No foolin’?” Goozer said. “That’ll come in handy.”
“If it works,” Frexle pointed out.
“It’ll work,” the robots replied together.
Harr wanted to ask what precisely a Ribinsaw Koostakleeker was, but he was certain he’d be more disturbed than interested, and there was no doubt he’d find out eventually anyway.
Goozer gave both Geezer and Frexle a minuscule fist pump, and climbed up the ramp.
The entire crew looked on as the Tiny Ship prepared for launch. Then, without so much as the sound of a pin dropping, it blinked out of existence.
“Now what, thir?” asked Moon.
“I’d like to know the answer to that, too, Supreme Orgasm.”
Jezden laughed.
“Okay, enough of that, Frexle,” said Harr, still reeling from everything. “Just call me ‘Prime’ or ‘Honcho’ like Geezer does, yeah? No more fancy stuff.”
“Kind of glad you said that,” admitted Frexle. “Was running out of material.”
Harr moved back to his chair and sat down.
Platoon F was short two crewmen, but the faces on his bridge were all reliable, hardworking, and strong. Even Jezden fit that bill in his own way.
“And as far as what’s next for the Reluctant and the crew of Platoon F…”
Harr stopped and looked out at the vast blank canvas of space. It wasn’t quite as breathtaking from within the confines of the ship, but it was still beautiful. Dangerous, unrelenting, and colder than the deepest ocean, but miraculous nonetheless.
Grog and Vlak had alluded to there being further adventures for Platoon F, but Harr had no clue what they had in mind.
And it wasn’t as though the Overseers had officially released the Reluctant either. Harr doubted there would be more assassination-style missions, assuming the Overseers maintained their new disposition, but there were still plenty of dicey situations the Overseers could churn up for Platoon F.
“I guess only time will tell,” he said, glancing from face to face, seeing they were still as interested as ever in serving on this crew. Yes, even Jezden. “But whatever it is, I’m sure this team will be up for the challenge.”
“Gay.”
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